Review of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2'

Well, this is it, the last of the Harry Potter films and hang on to your hats for some big moments…and some small, intimate, ones as well.

Snape has taken over as headmaster of Hogwarts while Harry, Hermione and Ron continue to search then destroy the remaining Horcruxes. The tension between the three is largely left alone with it obvious very early on that Ron and Hermione were going to get together…Harry's personal life is largely left to tracking down, and hopefully, killing Voldemort. There are a couple of revelations that, of course, will not come as too much of a surprise to most of the audience who will have seen all of the previous movies and, likely, read all of the books (or, even more likely, done all of these multiple times).

The battle for Hogwarts occupies a large part of this movie and is where the special effects come into their own. While I saw the movie in 3-D this is only really of consequence in a few places throughout the 2 hour+ movie. The picture is dark and dull in most places with only a few exceptions. Aside: The comment about the brilliantly white Kings Cross made by Harry is quite amusing for those of us that live in London - oh, note to those that are not from here: The view of the wonderful gothic building pro-porting, in the movie, to be Kings Cross is actually the front part of the refurbished St Pancras station, next door to Kings Cross, and is now, in fact, a luxury hotel. The real Kings Cross is somewhat…dirtier…and is, itself, in the middle of refurbishment.

Acting of the three main leads is better though in this Hermione and Ron really are in the background from the main focus on Harry with few lines and only a few actions of any consequence (yes, the destruction of the horcruxes is quite pivotal, I will admit).

This is a movie that has nothing to prove so I was pleased to see that the effects were in place to tell the story and the director was not afraid to slow down the pace at times and let the audience soak in what is happening. I wonder if this is because there is no chance of a sequel any time soon, and the financial stability of the movie was pretty much guaranteed from the previous movies, that the director was not under the pressure to get people into the cinema. In this case, it would be nice to see more of such films - Blockbuster yet not afraid to slow down the pace at times. I can say at our sold-out screening the fans in the crowd paid rapt attention throughout - The movie was wonderful to them before they had even seen it!

If you have not seen the other movies - Don't bother. If you have not read the books I would suggest it might not be a good idea to see either. If, however, you have done both, you will likely enjoy.